Ashland Youth Ball Association Baseball Softball Ashland Nebraska

Of all the games played by Americans, there is no question that the one game most uniquely identified with being American is baseball. Every family has baseball stories, from the Depression-era town teams vying for regional supremacy, to brushes with local Hall of Famers like Grover Cleveland Alexander, or Saunders County's own Wahoo Sam Crawford, whose major league career record for triples still stands, and likely will forever: ballfields were much larger in his day. The Cubs' home field, the West Side Grounds, was 560 ft. to center, and the Red Sox' Huntington Avenue Grounds a gargantuan 635. Who knows which of these kids playing today in Ashland might have it in him to play one day in the big leagues? Anything is possible. Baseball teaches that truth better than anything. Anything's possible. With hard work, strategy and a bit of good luck, a baseball game can turn on one hit. It's both a team game and an individual competition; there's no bigger competitive moment than a full-count pitch in a critical situation. If that pitch is put into play, it may be that several team members handle the ball in order to record the out. And if the batter swats a base hit, or better yet, a homerun, there's not a more euphoric (or dejected) moment in all sport.